Il sistema multilaterale degli scambi come piattaforma per affrontare le sfide globali: gli Accordi e le Iniziative plurilaterali dell’OMC quali strumenti di governance del nuovo ordine economico mondiale
The Multilateral Trading System as a Platform for Addressing Global Challenges: Plurilateral WTO Agreements and Initiatives as Governance Instruments of the New World Economic Order
The multilateral trading system, as enshrined in the WTO Agreement and the extensive body of practice developed within it over more than three decades, has given rise to the most significant manifestation of the principle of international cooperation in the governance of the global economy. However, it has failed to build the political consensus necessary to review, deepen and broaden its rules, so as to reflect the new equilibrium of the global economy and respond to the new challenges facing the international community.
There are several significant weaknesses in the Geneva-based system that need to be studied in depth to identify the tools capable of recognizing and regulating the new world economic order. First and foremost, there are the tensions triggered by the main promoter of the multilateral system, the United States. The latter, in fact, blocked the WTO Appellate Body, and adopted heavy tariffs, also in the name of national and economic security, to forcefully highlight the need to overcome significant trade imbalances. We refer, in particular, to the unevenness primarily generated by China’s relentless economic development, which is not accompanied by transparency in many of its trade rules, nor by the dismantling of massive public intervention in its production system. A second issue lies in the pressures caused by the WTO’s inability to fully include developing countries. Thirdly, we recall the ineffectiveness of the WTO’s political pillar in establishing new rules to address the global challenges of technological innovation and climate change, environmental protection and biodiversity, and to promote compliance with social standards regarding the dignity of workers and communities.
Within the broader framework of WTO reforms, a growing number of significant initiatives are emerging aimed at moving beyond the ‘single package’ principle through instruments that allow those WTO Members wishing to deepen and broaden the existing multilateral framework to do so, even in the presence of other Members who are reluctant or, in any case, not yet ready. These are the plurilateral agreements and initiatives, which could represent an important response to the necessary renewal of the international governance of the global economy, transforming the current, profound crisis into a vital opportunity to address the system’s weaknesses and reposition the WTO for the future. These instruments of plurilateral cooperation, which are increasingly central to the current debate, offer new perspectives for a rules-based governance of the global economy that reflects the new weighing scale of relations between national economies, restoring certainty and predictability to international trade relations, overcoming asymmetries, and providing a response to the challenges of our time.
The Project proposed here aims to analyze, within the context of the WTO reform process, the plurilateral agreements and initiatives, reconstructing the dynamics characterizing the debate with a view to arriving at common formulas, seeking solutions to maintain these instruments within the framework of the multilateral system, so as to equip the governance of the global economy with new rules and coordination procedures capable of responding to the challenges of our time, promoting a new and jointly-defined economic development characterized by equity and inclusion, within an international context of the greatest possible transparency and, consequently, participation.
The Research Group will reconstruct the framework of plurilateral agreements and initiatives, currently under discussion within the WTO, in the light of the previous practice within the multilateral trading system. In fact, plurilateral instruments are not entirely new to the multilateral system: the Tokyo Round of the late 1970s, for example, concluded with the adoption of Codes to which only a portion of the then-membership of the GATT 1947 adhered.
Alongside the Plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement, research into the practice initiated in 2017 will be central and in-depth. We will focus on the Joint Statement Initiatives (JSIs) adopted at the Buenos Aires Ministerial Conference, which launched intensive work on plurilateral agreements for investment facilitation, the regulation of e-commerce and the domestic regulation of services, with texts already included in the General Agreement on Services, and significant proposals for adopting new treaties currently opposed, within the WTO, through the use of the veto, in particular by India (the Plurilateral Agreements on Investment Facilitation and on E-commerce). Likewise, we will consider in-depth the discussions on principles and rules for greater involvement of small and medium- sized enterprises in the trade liberalisation system, and on the inclusion of women’s empowerment and gender issues in multilateral rules.
The research will also include the most recently launched plurilateral initiatives and informal groups: we refer to the Trade and Environmental Sustainability Structured Discussions (TESSD), the Dialogue on Plastics Pollution and Environmentally Sustainable Plastics Trade (DPP), the Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform (FFSR) initiative, the various informal working groups on trade-related issues, as well as the interim solution to the Appellate Body crisis represented by the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA).
For each multilateral agreement and initiative and for each informal group, the minutes of WTO meetings and the doctrine emerging from the political-scientific debate will be analyzed, reconstructing the demands and needs of the actors in the multilateral system – namely the United States, China, the European Union, India, and developing countries, with particular attention to Africa – to identify issues likely to complement and strengthen the Mattei Plan. Due attention will be given to the case law developed in WTO dispute settlement system, and legal grounds will be sought to ensure the most robust maintenance and integration of new plurilateral instruments into the WTO’s legal framework. Furthermore, the analysis will also cover reform proposals and documents prepared by WTO Members and the facilitator for WTO reform process, Ambassador Petter Ølberg of Norway, appointed by the WTO General Council, as well as the outcomes of the 14th WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Cameroon on 26–29 March 2026.
Alongside plurilateral initiatives within the WTO, equal attention will be paid to the main plurilateral agreements and clusters of bilateral agreements that are being established formally outside the multilateral trading system, whilst constantly referring back to it. This attention is devoted, in particular, to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) as a “gold standard” for plurilateral collaboration for a new world trade governance, the EU Digital Partnerships and the new generation of EU Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), the clusters of US Agreements on Reciprocal Trade (ARTs) and the set of bilateral memoranda, arrangements and the US project for a binding plurilateral agreement in the EU Raw Materials Diplomacy and the US strategy on critical minerals.
The Project is co-funded by the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Bologna and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI). The information and views expressed in the activities and outputs of this Project are those of the researchers and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
Professor Elisa Baroncini, Scientific Coordinator of the Project